Will It Snow in Louisiana in January? Don’t Bet Against It

If you want to get someone in Louisiana's attention you can put tomatoes in their gumbo. That will turn heads from Lafayette to St Martinville to Crowley to Kaplan. Of course, those heads will quickly turn away in disgust. Besides tomatoes in gumbo another event that will "make Louisiana look" involves the word snow.

Snow is not foreign to cities such as Lake Charles, Lafayette, or Baton Rouge but it is very unlikely. If we do see snow in Louisiana it is more likely that the I-20 corridor cities of Shreveport, Bossier City, Ruston, Monroe, and Tallulah will see it than those communities located closer to the Gulf Coast.

Based on historical data, if Louisiana is going to see frozen precipitation, we are into that very narrow window of time when such a meteorological event might occur. If you look back through time you'll see the middle and latter weeks of January always seem to bring a threat of frozen precipitation to Louisiana.

And look here, this is what the Climate Prediction Center has posted as reposted by one of our friends from the tropical forecasting realm at Mike's Weather Page. 

This graphic of an experimental forecast product seems to suggest that the northern half of Louisiana might be dealing with frozen precipitation by next Thursday and Friday. The setup for such an event does appear to be coming together. Below is the temperature outlook for the country for the next week or so.

As you can see all of Louisiana is in line for below-normal temperatures during the forecast period. Add just a little falling precipitation to these cooler temperatures and we could have a significant winter weather event. The operative word to remember is "could".

As of now, the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Shreveport is keeping a wait-and-see attitude about any winter weather outbreak next week. There are still a lot of variables that will have to come together before we see flakes falling from the Louisiana sky. But just know, that is well within the realm of possibility sooner than later especially if you live north of Alexandria.